-Spoiler Alert- 2022 seems to be a coming-of-age year for traditional epic films in Nollywood, with audiences being treated to culturally rich films. Earlier this year, King of Thieves stole hearts in the cinemas, now Kunle Afolayan excites us with Anikulapo while Biyi Bandele’s Elesin Oba waits in the wings. Anikulapo is a Yoruba traditional epic set when the Ọ̀yọ́ empire reign dominated Yoruba land. With this latest Netflix entry, Kunle Afolayan transports us back in time with a story inspired by the Ifá mythology, a true and proper display of culture. ‘ ‘Anikulapo’: In Defence of Saro Saro (Kunle…
Author: Ayodele Olawumi
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Thrillers that have twins as the lead characters seem to always have exciting plots whether the characters are working together against a common adversary or whether they are on opposite sides. Brotherhood joins films like Sheldon Lettich’s Double Impact where Van Damme plays twins separated as babies joining forces as adults to avenge their parents’ death and Woo Ping Yuen’s Tai Chi Master featuring two Shaolin monks embarking on radically different paths after being expelled from their temple. In Brotherhood, twin brothers Wale (Folarin Falana) and Akin (Tobi Bakre) face off on either side of the law. After witnessing the…
Tẹjú Cole states in his 2018 essay “On the Blackness of the Panther”, “many movies made by Hollywood have engaged in thought experiments about Africa. Some, made for American whites, resurrect colonial fantasy, with the African roles either brutish or naive. Others, made for American blacks, have a goal of uplift, cloaking the African experience with a fictional grandeur.” Somehow The Woman King manages to be a hybrid of both kinds of film. Historical accuracy is put aside for a story that would be more endearing to a western audience. Dahomey is portrayed as a peace-loving kingdom that only participates…
In 2002 Lanre Olorunnisola was unjustly imprisoned, in 2016 he published a memoir titled “Prison Notes”, chronicling his time and experiences in the prison. Inside Life is the film adaptation of Lanre Olorunnisola’s story, a story well told that it’s tempting to narrate, but for the fear of spoiling the film for potential viewers I won’t go in deep. Larry (Wole Ojo) is instructed by his boss to go to Lagos to represent the company in a long-running court case. What is meant to be a routine court appearance on behalf of the company becomes a brief prison sentence when…
In Todd Phillips’ 2009 comedy blockbuster The Hangover, Doug and his groomsmen take a trip to Las Vegas for his bachelor’s party, his friends wake up the next morning to find Doug missing. They have to find him before the wedding (if he is still alive). They scour the city looking for him, encountering several problems only to realise at the death that they left Doug on the roof of their hotel. Passport has a similar plot pattern, at least in the nature of the story. Spoilt rich kid Oscar (Jim Iyke) has come to Lagos from London to propose…
In a recent interview with WKMUp, Kayode Kasum shares “Obara’m exists because I wanted to make the kind of film that my grandmother would love to watch”. True to his words, Obara’m is a movie Nigerian mothers or maybe even mothers around the world would enjoy watching—chastising errant characters, marvelling at the wits and talent of a child actor and accompanying emotional scenes with emphatic tears. In the village, Ihunnaya (Darasimi Nadi) is an open secret, one which only she is oblivious to as she heartily calls her loving grandfather (Nkem Owoh) Pápá, the only parent she has ever known.…
To ‘hammer’ is a Nigerian slang that means to hit it big. When they say you’ve ‘hammered’, it means you have achieved great success in whatever field you are in and have come into a state of affluence, like artiste Olu Maintain says in his hit 2007 single Yahooze, “I don hammer, too much money, the problem is how to spend it”. Showing a waitress’s (Bimbo Ademoye) journey and struggles to reach this kind of breakthrough must have been the intention in Hammer. Our protagonist, a first class graduate, struggles to make ends meet, be successful and take care of…
–Minor Spoilers– In this follow-up to Get Out and Us, Jordan Peele treats us to a remarkable cinema experience as we follow the story of horse-wrangling siblings as they contend with a predatory otherworldly being. Otis ‘OJ’ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer) are part of a horse-wrangling family who has trained and supplied horses for movies and TV shows in Hollywood (the only black-owned ranch to do so) for as long as they can tell. They pride themselves on being direct descendants of the unnamed horse rider in one of the first productions of modern cinema. Their father…
Sisters in arms Chike (Adesua Etomi-Wellington) and Grace (Kehinde Bankole) grace our screens as Inkblot releases the sequel to the 2019 installment of the franchise. The stakes are higher in The Set Up 2 as it has become a high-end espionage venture with Chike and Grace facing off a new villain in Usi (Nancy Isime), one of the madam’s former hench ladies. Chike now works for the American government as a security agent, as part of her sentence for drug trafficking, Grace is married with a kid while Madam (Tina Mba) is in prison. ‘Hey You’ Review: What is Really…
The power of friendship and a fire extinguisher is enough to overcome man-eating aliens who have come to earth to retrieve a life-saving metal and destroy the earth. Friends Sam (Rea Rangaka), Prince (Kiroshan Naidoo) and Junior (Sechaba Ramphele) all work together at AMI, a mining company that mines the only known zulcanoid deposit, a mercury-like metal that is high in demand. At the company, they work as a geologist, accountant and security guard respectively. An already stable company starts to face economic problems when new CEO Melusi (Kabomo Vilakuzi) takes charge. He decides to reduce employee benefits to increase…